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Host
In the HBO series ''Westworld'', a Host is an artificially created being, an android or artificially created animal. All of the animals (except for flies) in Westworld are hosts. In the early years of the park, hosts were mostly mechanical, with metallic 'bones' inside their limbs. In more recent years, hosts are now either all or mostly made of living tissue like flesh and blood (or something similar). This tissue can rot, and when the cooling system in Cold Storage stops functioning properly, the hosts are said to smell bad.Ashley Stubbs, "The Original"Man in Black in "Contrapasso" The manufacturing process for these late-model hosts appears to use an advanced version of 3D printing technology. The hosts are built to act out both storylines and narratives in the park by interacting with each other and with guests. They are designed to be incapable of hurting any living non-host. They are the creations of Arnold and Dr. Robert Ford. Hosts - An Introduction Guests are allowed to use a host in any way they choose, up to and including actions that would kill a human and which do destroy the host. Guests are guaranteed privacy. ]] While hosts are not meant to recall past loops and previous builds, some of them have been able to do this: Angela, Teddy, Maeve, and Dolores. According to Elsie Hughes, hosts are designed to understand dreams as a safety measure to explain any memories of Livestock employees handling them that are accidentally left behind because an employee forgot to 'wipe' a host's memory. In the episode "Chestnut", Maeve Millay was said by Elsie to have some bodily discomfort. Maeve was subsequently found to have an MRSA infection in her abdomen (most probably due to surgical site contamination.) Also in "Contrapasso", the Man in Black" said that hosts used to be mechanical but that now they are biological. He believes this change was made to reduce costs, unlike the official explanation for the change. Some hosts may have the ability to love (probably only those hosts who have achieved true consciousness). Hosts have the ability, by design, to engage in any sexual behavior that humans can. During the later years of the park in season one, hosts were supposed to have a "weapons privilege" in order to fire or use a weapon. Host Dolores Abernathy was unable to fire a gun in one part of episode, The Stray. However, near the end of this episode, she was shown to somehow have been able to fire a weapon twice at the outlaw Rebus, who was terrorizing her in her barn. She has also been shown using a handgun very effectively against the Confederados in Pariah during "Contrapasso", and again against Confederados in "The Well-Tempered Clavier". Construction Details Hosts are all built with an explosive in their C6 vertebra (the second to last vertebra in the neck). This explosive will detonate if a host leaves the boundaries of the park.Maeve Millay, Trace Decay The explosive cannot be removed, but if a host requires a "full rebuild" it can be constructed without the explosive (using a C6 vertebra that does not have an explosive in it). Maeve Millay forces a full rebuild, without an explosive C6, by making sure her body is destroyed in a fire along with Hector Escaton. Jonathan Nolan has revealed a few things about the hosts' bodies:http://www.ew.com/article/2016/11/13/westworld-interview-bernard-clementine * "Their construction and their power source" is something that will be explored in Season Two. * "Hosts are closer to biological than they are to mechanical, but they don’t suffer brain death the same way we do." * "They’re largely indistinguishable from human beings", but with some important differences: ** "Their brains don’t require oxygen — which leads to interesting possibilities". ** "They don't suffer brain death the same way we do". ** "Their cognition is controllable and malleable". ** "On a structural level, they can’t be killed in the same way you and I can". ** Their 'brains' are not as fragile as human brains, and are protected by what Felix called a cortical shield (in the episode "The Bicameral Mind"). ** Their 'brains' are more powerful than human brains (Felix tells Maeve this). Relationships with Hosts Many guests are said to become emotionally attached to and involved with hosts, though some guests, such as Logan, enjoy tormenting, maiming, and even killing them. Dr. Ford enjoys visits with one of his deactivated hosts named, Old Bill (who is stored on floor B83), as well as the first generation hosts who are simulacra of his family. Dr. Ford has full control over the hosts, including the animals hosts; with a movement of his index finger and/or a voice command he can pause dozens of hosts. At one point, Hughes steals a kiss from Clementine while the host is in Analysis Mode.The Original Felix Lutz, a Body Shop employee in the Livestock Management division, is captivated by the host Maeve Millay, and he risked job termination by showing her around the Mesa Hub (although the reason why he did so is not explicitly explained by dialogue).The Adversary Hosts are programmed to be incapable of causing permanent damage to a human. Firearms in the park feature low-velocity technology (like being shot with paintball rounds). These rounds are painful and surprising to new guests, but veteran visitors to the park like the Man in Black have grown accustomed to the impact. There are various difficulty levels within the park, and the further a guest gets from Sweetwater, to places like Pariah, the more harm can come to them. In the 'early years' of the park when Logan visited Pariah, he was beaten by hosts. But, even at the fringes of the park, hosts cannot kill humans. (The DiscoverWestworld.com website claims that: "You won’t be in any physical danger at Westworld" and "you will never be in any risk of bodily harm".) The park has other safety measures to prevent human guests from being harmed. One is of these is the Good Samaritan™ reflex is programmed into every host. Some hosts are also presumably instructed to aid humans who are harmed in accidents (e.g. if a human trips down a flight of stairs or falls off a horse and hits his head, the hosts will rush to help the human). Another safety measure is having a 10-to-1 ratio of hosts to guests, so that hosts can help and intervene is there is trouble. (For example, if one guest is menacing another one with a broken bottle, a bunch of hosts can get between the two guests and bear the brunt of the attack.) Hosts' Narratives At least some hosts are given a narrative to follow, and it may be that all hosts have a narrative to follow. Lee Sizemore is the park's head of the Narrative Division and the employees in this division write the story lines. As the park's director, Dr. Ford is the only one with the authority to veto a narrative.Chestnut Cognition Delos did not want the hosts to be truly conscious and self-aware, because then 'killing', maiming, torturing, raping, and otherwise mistreating the hosts would be too cruel, and the hosts would remember the human's misdeeds. Arnold theorized that he could create consciousness by guiding a host through levels of increasing complexity: memory, improvisation, self-interest, and then finally an internal monologue through which consciousness would be achieved. While hosts are in their behavior loops, they are simply acting out branching scripts, and cannot learn from prior experiences, even on a sub-conscious level. On at least two occasions (by Arnold, and then in "The Original" by Ford) some Hosts have been programed with an update to experience "reveries", fleeting sub-conscious memories of prior loops, which leads to basic improvisation - the hope being that this would help them refine their behavior to be more realistic. Giving a host true longstanding memory, however, soon gives them a coherent set of experiences to draw upon, leading to distinct personalities and action in self-interest. A key difference between hosts and humans is that because their memories are stored as computer files, they do not degrade over time like the memories stored in biological human brains. In some cases this can significantly affect their perception of time: hosts experience all of the sensations from a memory with perfect accuracy, to the point that they cannot distinguish them from what is happening in the present. Hosts who have flashes of memory from prior loops may experience them as multiple overlapping audio-visual hallucinations: seeing memories of people who aren't there, or a current attacker bringing up such vivid memories of a prior attacker that their images overlap. It is also difficult for them to distinguish between prior events which occurred in two separate loops. Attribute Matrix The Attribute Matrix represents the attribute that comprise a host's personality, and can be modified by using a tablet. The existence of this matrix was revealed in the episode, "The Adversary", although Maeve's "Aggression" attribute was changed in a previous episode by employees in the Narrative Division, in an attempt to improve her success rate with guests. Two of Maeve's other attributes, "Perception" and "Emotional Acuity" were changed by Elsie and a Behavior technician in the same episode. Attribute Matrix.png|Part of Maeve Millay's Attribute Matrix, as seen in "The Adversary". On this screen, each attribute can be given a value between 1 and 20. (It may be that the lower limit is 0 rather than 1, as the attribute with a value of 1 in this image, "Cruelty", does not appear to be set at the lowest level possible.) There are other attributes, which not listed on this configuration screen. The attributes on this screen appear to be "Attribute Group 01". For example, Maeve Millay asks for her sensitivity to pain to be reduced, but there doesn't seem to be an attribute on this screen which would affect that. Also, Elsie speaks of the attributes "Perception" and "Emotional Acuity" when she has Maeve in Diagnostics ("Open up her primaries"). The attributes listed in Group 01 are: * Bulk Apperception: a host's overall intelligence; it means the process of understanding something in terms of previous experience ("the process by which new experience is assimilated to and transformed by the residuum of past experience of an individual to form a new whole" - Dagobert D. Runes). * Candor: * Vivacity: * Coordination: * Meekness: * Humility: * Cruelty: * Self Preservation: * Patience: * Decisiveness: * Imagination: * Curiosity: * Aggression: * Loyalty: * Empathy: * Tenacity: * Courage: * Sensuality: * Charm: * Humor: Known Hosts This is a list of some characters that are known to be hosts. It's not maintained as a definitive list. *Armistice In service *Bernard Lowe In Service: built by Ford as a simulacra of Arnold. *Old Clementine Decommissioned, replaced by New Clementine. Old Clementine shot the MiB during "The Bicameral Mind". *Deputy Foss In service *Deputy Roe Unknown *Dolores The oldest host in service (built by Arnold).Ford, The Original *Hector Escaton In service *Holden In service *Homestead Girl In service *Kissy In service (unlikely to appear again due to the death of the actor). *Lawrence's Daughter In service *Lawrence In service *Little Boy In service: a simulacra of a Robert Ford as a child (built by Arnold). *Maeve Millay In service *Old Bill Decommissioned: the second-oldest host. *Old Peter Abernathy Decommissioned, replaced by New Peter Abernathy, thought to have been used by Lee Sizemore to transport information out of the park - but was missing from Cold Storage along with all of the other stored hosts when Sizemore checked there during "The Bicameral Mind". *Rebus In service *Sheriff Pickett In service after recent repair *Sheriff Reed In service *Slim In service *Teddy Flood In service *Tenderloin In service *Old Walter Decommissioned, replaced by New Walter. *Wyatt In service Creation of Hosts creating hosts.jpg|Creation of a male host Creating_Host_new.jpg Host_creations_1.jpg Hosts in Analysis Mode Maeve Host.jpg|'Maeve'|link=Maeve_Millay Clementine the host.jpg|'Clementine'|link=Clementine Peter abernathy as host.png|'Peter Abernathy'|link=Peter_Abernathy References de: Category:Definitions Category:Objects